The end of The Iliad is marked by two funerals and a rage. In the 23rd book of the epic poem, the great Greek hero Achilles mourns the death of his friend Patroclus with lamentations, funeral games, feasts, war cries. Over the corpse of Hector, the mourning is quieter, deeper.
Something of the latter spirit hung over an evening gathering in Delhi recently in memoriam of Bombay poet, painter, playwright Gieve Patel. Patel died a year ago; for his friends, there has been no closure. At Delhi’s Vadehra Art Gallery, seven of his friends and artists – Sudhir Patwardhan, Ranjit Hoskote, Gulam Mohammed and Nilima Sheikh, Ranbir Kaleka, and Anju and Atul Dodiya – sat around a table talking about him in what can only be called an uninterrupted public wake, whose object seems to have been the creation of memory about Patel, so as to talk about his place and the place of his art in their lives, and in the world.
